Programme of the Day

SPEAKERS PROFILE

Sashi Sashidharan is a Consultant Psychiatrist. He has an Honorary Professorship at the University of Warwick (Warwick Medical School) where he is the co-director (with Professor Scott Weich) of the Centre for Research in Ethnicity and Mental Health. Professor Sashidharan worked as the Medical Director of North Birmingham Mental Health Trust between 1994 and 2003. His research background is in psychiatric epidemiology, community mental health and in the field of mental health and ethnicity. He has been actively involved in research, service reform and campaigns to improve community mental health services and reduce and eliminate ethnic inequalities in mental health services.  He was the chairman of the External Reference Group of the Department of Health in England that developed the first national strategy to improve mental health services for people from Black and Minority Ethnic Communities in England (Inside Outside).  He has worked as a mental health consultant to the World Health Organization and the Asian Development Bank.  Since 2007 he has been working as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Scotland and is a founder member of the Global Forum for Community Mental Health.

Simon Dein, MRCPsych, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Medicine at the University College London and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow. He runs an MSc course on Culture and Health and is currently the editor of the journal of Mental Health, Religion and Culture (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/13674676.html).  He also has written and researched extensively on Religion and Health, some of his published books include 'Readings in Cultural Psychiatry', and more recently 'Culture and Cancer Care: Anthropological Insights in Oncology' and  'Religion and Healing Among the Lubavitch Community in Stamford Hill, North London: A Case Study of Hasidism: 27 (Jewish Studies)'.

Kate Loewenthal is Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor of Abnormal Psychology at New York University in London, and a Visiting Professor (in Psychology of Religion) at Glyndwr University, Wales, and Heythrop College, University of London. Her research interests are in religion, culture and mental health, and she has published over 100 papers and several books, including Religion, Culture and Mental Health (Cambridge University Press, 2007).  She is also a trustee of several organisations working in this area, and is an editor of the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture.

Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed is a psychiatrist with postgraduate degrees in the philosophy and anthropology of mental health. His doctoral research examined Quranic healing, spirit possession, and psychosis in the Western desert of Egypt.  He has published on values, culture, and psychopathology and is currently developing a manuscript entitled: Islam and the Ethical Practice of Psychiatry.  His interests traverse the philosophy of mental health and psychiatric anthropology. In particular, he uses detailed clinical and ethnographic material to address conceptual issues at the intersection of psychiatry and culture.

Sophie Day studied at Cambridge University, Stanford University, and the London School of Economic and Political Sciences, where she completed a PhD on spirit possession in Ladakh, North India. She holds an honorary chair at Imperial College, London in the School of Public Health, where she is seconded for three years from April 2011. She was awarded the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems for her 2007 monograph, On the Game: Women and Sex Work. London: Pluto Press. Whilst on secondment at Imperial College London, Professor Day is continuing to supervise her Goldsmiths PhD students whilst conducting research on several topics, ranging from biobanking to collaborative research with nursing staff on patient experiences locally and evaluation of a three country intervention to prevent cardiovascular illness. She is teaching on Society and Health to first year medical students and contributes to other courses such as the BSc in Global Health.